Throughout my life, fellow athletes have served as a great source of inspiration for me. Being highly competitive myself, this has also motivated me to strive to match or surpass their achievements. Which is overall a good thing as long as it's a positive and fun competition to become better while the principle of team spirit always holds superiority. I.e. that the team does not suffer from my inner fight to better others.
Small detour: I think this whole competition thing lies deeply ingrained in my youth when it was super fun to compete to win but also to override insecurities of my own self through becoming better with and in the team. Yes, I've been exposed to bullying and such when I was a kid and my only valve had been cheer rage at whoever pointed it against me. My second - much more sane - valve had been competing in all sorts of sports... preferably with a ball involved.
Back to the story: sports - in particular team sports - are an amazing thing. A collective of human beings is out there to achieve a target (a goal, a basket, a point..) in a harmonious and right on time concerted effort.
Everyone has their part
Concerted effort in a team of 5, 11 or 15 men (guess the sports here) means that - like in chess - not everyone has the same function on the field. Otherwise it would be quite a mess and simply dysfunctional. In a football team, there are usually 4 defenders, 5 midfielders, one goalie and 1 attacker. Each one has their part to play and players will be matched with their interests and skills to the certain position to fill in. A defender is mostly robust, intelligent in setting up the play overall but also - forgive me - not the most creative or technical player on the field. A central midfielder is the most versatile as he or she is the link between all parts of the team, giving the rhythm to the game and has the biggest influence on deciding when to play fast and slow. An attacker must think more selfishly but in the spirit of the team as he needs to convert the only real meaningful result in the end - scoring goals.
Now let's compare this to the business world and you quickly realise the analogies right out. You'll have the creators on the 'pitch' which can resemble the product guys or the management for dictating the game; you'll have the customer success management team (goalie and defence) who looks out for the client and makes sure that the service is being intact. They are naturally more cautious when it comes down to innovation and their priority is to keep our scoreboard clean. Sales and biz dev people are more daring, seeing the chances in front of them to change the game for the company while having - and this is important - the balance between all parts of the team in mind. They must be daring and forceful to seek out chances but they also must work back as only if all parts work together, defend together and fight together it will be a winning formula.
Failure
Since we set out the different skills, strengths and interests for each single link in the chain, let's come to a most beautiful understatement in sports which is critical to any successful business. Which is why I advise every parent to get their kid to a (team) sport early on and at least let it try to find its way into this sports world. The simple fact that sports comprise an overweight of dealing with failure. If we consciously think about sports that we are following, we realise that we are consistently witnessing failures and successes alike and most importantly, if we are the players, we consistently learn to live with it, or better to learn from it and try it again and again and improve.
Let's ponder this for a moment and cross it over to business.
It's a super power if you are not afraid to make mistakes. On the contrary, you welcome mistakes to learn from it. Sports is NOTHING else than this. It is a constant repetition of plays, tactics, rhythm, harmonies to make it to a benchmark level.
Benchmark level means here that you have an ideal play in mind at certain constellations of field positions. A midfielder breaks through in the centre of the pitch, suddenly creating an imbalance in the opposing defence of 5 against 4. The defence needs to amend tactics to cope with this imbalance while the attacking party seeks to exploit it. The ball possessing midfielder plays the ball wide to a winger to make use of the superiority of people and tear the defence apart therefore letting the defence expose critical space in front of goal. Only if then the cross is played right into the critical space and the attacker (usually the no. 9) has sensed this space as the most vulnerable in the defence area, then the chances of scoring increase dramatically.
Now, teams are practising these situations over and over again so that it becomes almost automatic behaviour on how to play in such situations. All top teams have the skills but more so also the cleverness through thousands of learned iterations to get a high probability to end up scoring. But even they will fail to a high degree, due to a. the equal clever and proven iterations of the defence knowing how to prevent such critical situations and b. the simple fact that they will fail in executing the right pass, the right weighting of the pass, the right run of each single player and so forth.
Compare this to business and you see the benefits of repetition, working and behaving together as "one system" point blank.
Seeing these potential dramas unfolding with so much skill at play is what keeps us getting into the stadium or in front of the telly.
Performance = Work/Time
More so, given one other simple fact: we are talking about high performing athletes. Performance put simply is work/time. In other words, every team in the world will score eventually (in a year or thousand) if you give them enough time to play. But this is hardly a performance that anyone would like to see. The fun of it comes into any footy match, tennis thriller or handball league game given the restriction and limitations of time.
Much nicer if you think of it than any endless political or social topics which can create a life of their own. Also in business we are at first, not limited by time but our resources and competition let us succumb to timely limits (annual, quarterly and monthly, even weekly targets...) So in other words, we are in sports and in business constantly seeking high performance. Seeing top athletes at the height of their game is a joy to watch. Full focused, concentrated you experience what a human being is capable of.
Another thrilling time aspect is that the aforementioned imbalances last for only a fraction of the time and it's about seizing the opportunity. This creates a tense and high pressure situation and seeing players becoming their very best in it is exciting to see.
The same is true for business people who excel at their game to show the best under the constraints of time and competition. You'll like to win but you first and foremost are in it to figure it out and get better. That is the winning formula.
So to recap, I have delved here into my astounding sports analogies for business and took a close look at three fundamental aspects, the harmony of individual roles, the awesome open-to-failure winning mentality and the impact of time.
Consider this part 1 of my foreword to a series of case studies which I am entertaining to publish to drive home these fundamentals. Part 2 of my foreword will come as an extra piece on winning mentality in sports, business and - I dare say - in life. I will call it the 'Kobe' section.
Yours,
Gero
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